Our house - one year later

Today marks one solid year since we purchased our home. Only 29 more years until it's all ours!

A year ago the room where I'm sitting belonged to somone else, peeling paint, water damaged walls, cloth wire light fixture and all.

Hard to believe it's been a year, and harder to believe it's the same house. That 2006 version feels more and more like we imagined it all - in which case we have some pretty masochistic fantasies.

One thing I'm not too fond of as a homeowner is snow shoveling. Milwaukee has been  buried under snow and ice all month, two feet plus if memory serves, and in response I duly say: Global Warming my A**.

All those years I whined about having to park on the street I never took into account that the city doesn't plow alleys. So now I have off-street parking but not a day goes by without my little car getting stuck, and more than once I've helped a neigbor push through a snow drift or an ice pack.

Ice dams have become a genuine concern around the city and no more so than at my house. One of two items we didn't have money to fix around here was the roof, an ancient affair with more than 5 layers of shingles.. Yikes.

I spent some time all week throwing ice chunks at 4 and 5 foot long icecles hanging from the south side of the house before they took my gutters down with their sheer weight.

Of course, as I write this the city is gripped in a balmy fog and much of the accumulation has turned to water - the alley has a twenty foot long puddle a good 6 inches deep - but the news says we have 2 or 3 inches on the way overnight.

Yeah. Again folks - global warming my A**.